Dark Remembrances
by Altheryon
Summary: After the Throne Room's confrontation against Graham Jones, Alucard muses about Soma and his father's dark legacy.


_Greetings! As always, I hope you are well!_

 _Yesterday was officially my last day on college this year so I got a little more time on my day to dedicate to writing and I present you with this other simple piece of mine. Because of some personal matters if I don't post anything before early December then probably I will just return to post in next year, unfortunately. Even if I like Soma and Mina stories, I do confess that I have a small idea to make a Soma/Mathias and Lisa romance in modern time, since I think there is nothing like this here posted before, as another side story to It's Never Late for Forgiveness, and yes, before you ask me, I will give it a try with her parents pretty much alive, but that's a project for another time._

 _Dark Remembrances is a small piece that portrays the dialogue between Soma and Arikado at the end of the battle with Graham Jones in Castlevania Aria of Sorrow, taken from Alucard's perspective and an attempt to write his thoughts during the scene. This is one of my most favorite scenes from this game. The dialogues are also taken faithfully from the game, only the story description is from my work alone._

 _As usual, Castlevania and any of its characters doesn't' belong to me._

 _I hope you enjoy!_

 _Lyon Heitor ~ Altheryon_

…

 **Dark Remembrances**

...

 _He's barely eighteen..._ The dhampir thought as he stared at the silver-haired young man in his knees at the center of the throne room, breathing heavily and trembling while trying at all costs to regain control of himself. _And yet, at the same time, he has so much more..._

Alucard frowned gravely; an expression that was not noticed by the other, for the elegant man in the black suit was hidden by the shadows that hung in the corners of the room. And he couldn't keep his thoughts from reflecting on the last years since _that_ fateful day, since the last time he had seen _him_...

By the time the new prophecy had been revealed, the prince of the night and his allies had secretly searched for Dracula's reincarnation for a long time with a sense of growing urgency in their hearts with each year that had passed without any success. There was a darkness that hovered over humanity, like a mighty storm that surrounded everything about to collapse at any moment. The year of 2035 was soon approaching, and those who knew the truth feared that they wouldn't be able to prevent the vampire from awakening, freeing his castle, taking control again over his supernatural army and unleashing on the world his overwhelming hatred multiplied by the total destruction of his body, result of the last confrontation he had had with the Belmont family, Belnades and...

The dhampir raised a hand and stared at it with black eyes that gleamed with some veiled consternation.

 _And also by my own hands, again..._

He closed his eyes.

Shortly before the arrival of the sentenced year an evil cult began to emerge and grow in the shadows, worshiping anything related to the lord of the eternal night and the demoniac castle that remained sealed within the solar eclipse. The identity of its mysterious leader had not been so difficult to discover, on the contrary, whenever he had the opportunity he often boasted himself with pride that he was the chosen one.

And Graham Jones really seemed to be the perfect match.

In addition to being born in the very year of 1999, his profile in everything resembled the vampire's in the few centuries that preceded his final fall. Jones was cold, calculative, and obstinate in pursuing whatever goal he saw as a priority. Little did he care for ordinary men or humanity in general, though to achieve whatever he wanted he often used a mask of false friendly cordiality. He cared little for the means used or for a life he had to eliminate to it get out of his way. Corrupted by the thirst for unimaginable powers, his arrogance and malice over time had become an inherent characteristic of his personality to those who knew him personally. The dhampir knew it, for he had observed and watched his movements through the shadows for a long time.

Jones was a complete stranger to him and he was also guilty of the various heinous crimes he had committed directly or through the cult he commanded, and proved that he was indeed the reincarnation of Dracula, the dhampir had long decided that he wouldn't hesitate to do what was necessary to prevent evil from resurfacing on the world. He would do so without getting involved, keeping himself emotionally distant and indifferent to that situation, trying to keep it that simple, just like a grand evil that needed to be stopped, because he refused to associate Jones with the image of his father.

 _But this..._ Alucard stared intensely at the silver-haired young man.

This was a completely unexpected situation.

He had seen him once, the dhampir remembered, a few years ago during a visit he had made to the Hakuba Shrine. A little boy with short silver hair and blue sparkling eyes playing absently with Mina, the only daughter of the temple's caretaker.

As he walked down the corridors talking to the man about the Japanese mythology associated with the prophecy, he heard the voices and laughter of the two children running through the courtyard not far from there, and in a moment, as he fled from his friend, the boy had suddenly entered the temple and bumped against the legs of the dark-haired man and almost fell on the ground and hurt himself, but the dhampir with quick reflexes had bent down and held him by the shoulders.

The boy stared frightened at him, but in the next moment his face brightened and a childish, innocent smile appeared spontaneously on his lips, and after quickly apologizing the child disentangled himself from his hands and ran back down the shrine's corridor. Soma was the name that Mr. Hakuba shouted in a disapproving tone as he shook his head, and even if the dhampir hadn't noticed anything different on that occasion about the boy, for some reason he couldn't explain Alucard never forgot his name.

Soma Cruz was just an ordinary boy who had grown up just like any other young man of his age, with a mundane and ordinary life, having the opportunity to study and plenty of time to think about his career and the future he wanted to himself.

At first he had not understood why Soma and Mina had also been transported into Castlevania at the time the prophecy had arrived and the eclipse had appeared in the sky of Japan, but upon seeing them there a certain dread began to grow within him that suddenly became an alarming finding when the boy, in contact with the magical aura surrounding the castle, unexpectedly awakened the power of dominance.

A finding that the dhampir at the beginning wanted to deny at any cost.

He was just a _boy_... Too _young_... With a _normal_ and _whole_ life to live ahead, and to have it cut down so suddenly with the discovery of a secret as dark and heavy as that...

That could not be true... It was _wrong_. It sounded _completely_ wrong.

"Finally... I clearly understand... Everything."

The silver-haired young man's voice suddenly manifested itself, abruptly cutting the silence of the throne room.

"I am... Dracula." Soma whispered with irony mingled with bitterness. "This is like a bad joke."

Soma slowly rose.

Standing in the middle of the room with closed eyes, disheveled hair, a strong magical aura surrounding his body and curved shoulders that seemed to bear a heavy burden, he breathed deeply and said in a louder tone that had a certain nuance of authority and command.

"Come on out, Arikado, I know you're here."

The dhampir shuddered internally for until that moment neither of the other two had felt his hidden presence. The energy that expanded through the throne room from the silver-haired boy was extremely familiar to him, once so dormant that it had been completely invisible, spent years unnoticed by him, but now so overwhelmingly present in the other, caressing his senses and bringing out the unpleasant feeling of haunting and resignation that he'd felt every time he'd faced the vampire in the past.

It was undeniably his father's magical aura.

Slowly the dhampir left the shadows that hid his silhouette, walking down the steps of the small staircase that separated him from the young man. He stopped a few feet away, his stance reserved and cautious, attentive to any single movement that the other did, waiting for the imminent attack that he was certain that soon would come, because he had no doubt of his father's terrible reprisal for what his own son had done against him in 1999.

But when Soma opened his eyes, golden at that moment with a superhuman glow, and gazed at him with torment mixed in genuine ignorance, desperately seeking in the dhampir the answers to the questions he didn't understand yet, Alucard, inwardly surprised, unconsciously lowered his guard when he realized the actual situation; that the boy's statement about himself was nothing more than a knowledge gained from the discoveries he had made inside the castle during the conversations he had with Graham Jones and Yoko.

 _He doesn't remember..._

"Why did you force me to awaken!?" Soma inquired abruptly, once more breaking the silence with contained fury. "I was fine as I was!"

The dark-haired man listened silently, not showing any reaction. Why? The dhampir inquired himself again, and he knew the answer to that question clearly, though he didn't admit it aloud for the other to hear.

He couldn't accept that the reincarnation of his father was only a pure and innocent boy, immaculate of the darkness and the evil secrets that impregnated the past of humanity and of which in a past life he had been the main responsible. He didn't want to believe that this boy, who barely turned eighteen, was bound to carry such a terrible burden, whose knowledge was still difficult even for the dhampir himself to deal with.

Alucard didn't know exactly what he expected of his father's reincarnation, what kind of man he would be, but certainly not _this_.

 _Not like this._

"Yes." The dark haired man answered slowly. "You weren't supposed to come to this castle in the first place."

"Then why did you make me come here!?" Soma shouted tremulously, opening his arms wide, showing the scenery around him, and Alucard understood what the other really meant to ask.

The young man was asking him not about the castle, or even about the throne room from which both the dhampir and the witch had insisted him to find and thus obtain means to leave the castle with his friend safely. He inquired about the knowledge he was bound to acquire upon entering that room, of having been forced to face Graham Jones in the duel of which only Dracula's true reincarnation would be able to win.

And as much as he wished he could deny that truth, the demonstration of Soma's power at the castle's entrance gates and the way it grew inside the boy as he moved through Castlevania areas made it even more undeniable. The dhampir then found himself in a new dilemma, torn between preserving that boy who seemed to not belong to that place and finding a way to get him and his friend safely out of the castle, or let himself be led by that growing feeling within that begged him to discover the truth behind the powers Soma had just awakened.

Was it his desire to completely rule out the possibility that the young man was involved with the prophecy... Or a secret inner desire to have confirmation that Graham was wrong and that Soma was indeed Dracula's reincarnation?

He inquired it many times that day but he couldn't find in himself to answer that question, and when Soma finally reached the throne room Alucard had been completely aware of whom the true lord of the eternal night was.

And looking at him intensely at that moment, the black-haired man confirmed he had found again the soul of his father as a boy that even now, somewhat aware of who he was and what it represented, revealed in his desperate gaze the purity of his spirit, intact and full with integrity, completely devoid of the darkness that for so many centuries had corrupted him to the point of madness.

A blessed chance to live a new life at the cost of all the memories of his true past.

On the other hand, this same soul was just one step away from being thrown into darkness again, and if that happened, he would be forced to end the boy's life to fulfill the oath he had made a long time ago.

"Your soul and Dracula's magical powers are one and the same. No matter what we did, this day was destined to come." Alucard decided to tell him after a brief moment of silence, thinking his words carefully. "That being so, I decided to awaken you somewhere I could use my powers."

The fury in the silver-haired young man's face slowly decreased, and his golden eyes, transformed by the magical energy that intensified even more in his body, acquired only a shadow of genuine confusion.

"What do you mean? I don't understand."

The dhampir's features softened in sympathy for the boy who knew nothing and understood nothing, because Soma, even being Dracula's reincarnation, in that moment didn't represented a great evil to be stopped. He was but a victim of his own terrible destiny, and answering, his voice came out sober and smooth.

"Because you are now one with him, an evil spirit must be flowing into you." The dhampir explained to him patiently and Soma nodded his head in agreement.

"Yes, it started not too long ago, and its slowly filling me up... I'm doing all that I can to keep from being consumed by it."

"Once you have finished absorbing all of it, his powers will be yours. You will then become the evil count..."

A grave silence made itself present in the throne room; the boy's eyes widened in alarm and slowly he started to shake his head, as if he couldn't truly believe what was happening to himself. The dhampir watched him and internally felt pity, and once again wondered how his father could have reincarnated as a boy as pure and naïve as Soma was.

"I do not want to let that happen." Alucard suddenly found himself saying those words, as if unconsciously seeking to somehow ease the apparent suffering that was present in the boy's countenance, and he abruptly stared back at him.

"Neither do I!" Soma exclaimed in dismay.

"I know," The dark-haired man whispered, and once again his gaze softened as he watched the other.

In the next instant of silence that prevailed over the throne room, the dhampir frowned gravely.

 _Do not hate humans_. His mother's words suddenly returned to his mind. _If you cannot live with them, then at least do them no harm._

Do not hurt them, do not interfere in their lives... And looking at Soma at that moment, being aware that he himself was partially to blame for the boy's current state, the dhampir evaluated the present and possible futures that could happen after the eclipse finally ended with a growing sense of dread in his heart, and he immediately sought to remove from his mind the worst scenario he had been able to conjure.

He wouldn't have hesitated to fight against Graham, if he had been _him_... But he could not imagine himself shedding the innocent blood of the boy in front of him who clearly struggled to not succumb to the force of chaos that slowly filled his being, to not surrender like he once did, unknowing, in the past.

Alucard closed his eyes, feeling again the strength of the bitter wound that still existed within him related to the remembrances of his parents, his mother's death and his father's downfall into total darkness after he had fled Castlevania, unable to accept the horrors committed by the vampire in retaliation for his wife's murder.

Deep down he believed that he himself had been one of the reasons that reinforced his father's action to throw himself into madness, and for many times the possible scenarios of 'what if he remained in the castle...' crossed his mind in a whirlwind of thoughts that were still painful to him, capable of rekindling the sadness and the lamentations that still tormented his spirit since that time.

 _My father..._ He thought, looking back at Soma. He had not been able to help him before... But now he had the chance for a new life, a new opportunity, to remain ignorant of the dark and extremely painful past that if once again surfaced it would destroy the other completely.

He couldn't let that happen... Not only because the boy was the true reincarnation of his father, and although he did not admit it aloud, he cared for that fact, but also because Soma was completely innocent and naive, a purity that should not be tainted, even if it meant making him stay completely ignorant of everything, even about what concerned the dhampir's true identity and his real involvement with Dracula.

Alucard frowned, and although his expression was sober and his voice pondered, conveying tranquility and confidence, he couldn't ignore the sudden stab that manifested itself in his heart at that thought.

"That's why I chose the dangerous route."

Soma looked at him with concerned.

"The dangerous route?"

Silently, the black-haired man nodded in agreement.

Thinking about the lord of the eternal night and the cursed castle he once called home, the dhampir remembered some things concerning his father and the magical powers he had possessed and which influenced the ancient building, as well as the energy of chaos that was becoming abundant and currently stronger in that place. He knew there was a way to prevent the complete transformation from happening and save the boy's life, to prevent him from completely awake and spare him from facing his destiny, delaying it even if only for a few couple of years...

It wouldn't be something easy to do, it would require all the spiritual strength and will of the boy to the point of exhaustion to be able to cut off the energy of chaos directly from its source, just as he was also aware that to proceed with such an act... Many ordinary men would succumb easily once entering _that_ place.

But looking at Soma, even the young man being who he was, the dhampir sincerely desired that he had that strength to overcome the evil that insisted on corrupting him, to be able to live the second chance that life offered him… To not make him act according to his promise if the boy failed...

"The evil in this spirit comes from those who seek chaos and destruction." Alucard then told him, measuring the words he was saying to reveal to the other what he needed to know without deepening into the true complexity surrounding his father and his power. " So we need to cut off the source of the chaos influencing the spirit."

"Is that possible?" Soma asked, and the light of genuine hope that lit on his face was almost pained to see.

"This castle is a product of Dracula's magic. It's a spiritual world. My point is this... a stream of chaos exists within this castle as well. There is a place where you, Dracula, can go." The dark-haired man explained as best he could; calling that innocent boy by the vampire's evil nickname sounded strange to his own ears, as wrong as it seemed to say that Soma was his father's reincarnation. "That's where the chaos is."

In the young man's golden eyes shone a strong gleaming of determination and courage of which nothing seemed able to unsettle.

"I'll go, I'm not afraid... But what do I do once I get there?"

"You'll have to stop it using your own strength." Alucard was silent for a moment, then in a softer tone, he added. "You already succeed in reaching the throne. I'm sure you can do it."

He _hoped_ he could do it.

"If it will make me myself again, I'll do what it takes." Soma stated immediately, without any hesitation, and the dhampir nodded his head in understanding.

"As long as my powers continue to affect this place, the flow of the evil spirit into you will be slowed down." The dark-haired man assured, and indicating the exit, he gently encouraged. "Go quickly!"

"I'm going..." The boy nodded, aware that he had little time to act. He turned in an instant to go to the exit, but hesitated. Soma looked back one last time to the mysterious man he had met at the castle, and with a more calm countenance, he said sincerely. "I appreciate your help…"

In his eyes there was genuine gratitude mingled in the shadow of a distant familiarity that only the dhampir had noticed, coming from a man distant in his memories that had lived with him and his mother in the past. But now there was no sign of recognition or knowledge in it, it was just an almost nonchalant glance of a person looking at an acquaintance he had just met on the street, and when Soma turned to leave, watching his retreating back, the dark-haired man felt for a moment completely numb, empty and alone.

Was this his own destiny? Living in the shadows of the world, guarding the safety of mankind only as a wandering ghost, without family, without past, without future, with no one who really _knew_ him, not just as the powerful ally who joined the Belmont clan in the fight against evil for so many centuries, but rather as the _person_ he was?

He had nothing, he had no one, Julius and Yoko who little knew him one day would also leave that world as is the fate of all mortals, and Soma, the only person who _should_ remember him for being his only true link with the past… Simply doesn't.

Despite telling himself that this was for the best, Alucard felt a cold mantle envelop his spirit, and he cursed himself for in the depths of his heart for wishing his father had remembered him.


End file.
